April, 27 2021, 12:00am EDT
Sunrise Ahead of Biden's Joint Address: "Legislate Like Our Lives Depend on It"
On the eve of President Biden's first address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, Sunrise Movement partnered with Justice Democrats, United We Dream, and Battle Born Collective to release a
WASHINGTON
On the eve of President Biden's first address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, Sunrise Movement partnered with Justice Democrats, United We Dream, and Battle Born Collective to release a progress report on President Biden's first 100 days in office. Sunrise's Communications Director, Zina Precht-Rodriguez, issued the following statement to complement the 100 days report:
"In November, voters delivered a climate mandate to President Biden that secured him and the Senate a last-shot chance at stopping the climate crisis. But while Biden still rides the wave of our "climate action equals jobs" rhetoric, the truth is, he hasn't been relentless on passing popular climate legislation. Setting climate targets and adopting a Rooseveltian governing approach to crises is a precursor, but it isn't enough. Now is the time for Biden to back up his progressive messaging with climate action that will actually stop the crisis at the scale that science and justice demand."
"Here are the facts. We need a $10 trillion of investment over the next decade to end the unemployment crisis and put millions of people to work in good, union jobs stopping the climate crisis. In order to do this, Biden must come out in full support of Ocasio-Cortez and Markey's Civilian Climate Corps (CCC) for Jobs and Justice Act in his address tomorrow night. In addition to direct public employment through a CCC, Biden must do everything in his power to pass a Clean Energy Standard to advance environmental justice and support a bold transition to renewable energy as well as the PRO Act to ensure all jobs created are indeed good, union jobs where workers are protected and guaranteed the right to organize.
"Nearly 100 days into the Biden presidency, we cannot wait any longer for the administration and Congress to act on the mandate they were elected on. No more empty promises. Legislate like our lives depend on it."
Sunrise Movement is a movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process.
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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
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Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.
Other countries including France, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have criticized Israel's invasion, while the United States defended the move.
"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."
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Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
"Look, when we talk about the healthcare crisis, in my view, and I think the view of a majority of Americans, the current system is broken, it is dysfunctional, it is cruel, and it is wildly inefficient—far too expensive," said Sanders (I-Vt.), whose position is backed up by various polls.
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"The way we're going to bring about the kind of fundamental changes we need in healthcare is, in fact, by a political movement which understands the government has got to represent all of us, not just the 1%," the senator told Jacobin.
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In addition to highlighting Sanders' interview on social media, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out to Business Insider on Wednesday that "you've got thousands of people that are sharing their stories of frustration" in the wake of Thompson's death.
Khanna—a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, led in the House of Representatives by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—made the case that you can recognize those stories without accepting the assassination.
"You condemn the murder of an insurance executive who was a father of two kids," he said. "At the same time, you say there's obviously an outpouring behavior of people whose claims are being denied, and we need to reform the system."
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
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Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
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